AUTHORITY OF THE BELIEVER.

DAILY DEVOTION.

DAY THIRTY TWO.

MATTHEW 28:18-20.   And Jesus came and spoke to them saying, "All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth, Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you, and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age."Amen.
Jesus here is now commissioning His disciples to go out into the world to take the gospel to all nations and to make disciples. He tells them that He now has all authority both in heaven and on earth and it is in this authority that they are to go, He is giving them His authority, the right to go out in His name to share the gospel. When He tells them to baptise people in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit He is referring to the complete authority that is found in the Godhead. So on what basis was Jesus able to do this? in Colossians 2:14-15 we see that through His death on the cross He totally deals with the issue of sin and takes back the authority that was handed to Satan by Adam at the fall, Satan now legally has no authority over your life and mine, as Paul said in Colossians 1:13 "He has delivered us from the power of darkness and conveyed us into the kingdom of the Son of His love." In John 17:15-16 Jesus is praying for the disciples and He asks that the Father would not remove them from the world but that He would protect them from Satan because as He was not part of the world, neither are they. We are no longer part of this world system and Jesus has given us His authority or delegated power to live as His disciples through the Holy Spirit. So how do we receive that power? Firstly we must be born again, the disciples were born again in John 20:22 when Jesus breathed on them and said, "Receive the Holy Spirit" at that point He imparted Spiritual life back to them, the Spiritual life that Adam lost when he sinned. We are all born dead in sin as a result, spiritually cut off from God,when we are born again the Jesus breathes on us and imparts His Spirit into our spirit and we receive that Spiritual life back again. In Acts 1:4-8 Jesus here commands his disciples not to leave Jerusalem until they have received the promise of the Father, until they are baptised in the Holy Spirit. He tells them that at that time they will receive the power to be His witnesses as they go out into the world. The word power there is "Dynamis" in the Greek and means the ability or abundance of power, also implies the ability to work miracles. It is through the Baptism of the Holy Spirit that we receive the ability to walk in the authority that Jesus gives us. We see in the life of Jesus Himself that He walked and ministered out the power of the Holy Spirit, at His baptism the Holy Spirit came on His life and we see that when He came out of the wilderness after the forty days in Luke 4:14 it says that He returned in the power of the Holy Spirit. If the ministry of Jesus was dependent on the power of the Holy Spirit how much more is ours? If we want to know and walk in the authority and the power that Jesus has given us through His death and resurrection our desire must be to know the fullness of the Spirit. Paul in 1 Corinthians 2:1-5 said that when he was among them he was determined to preach nothing but Christ and Him crucified, He did so in much fear and trembling, realizing the importance and responsibility that he had not to rely on his own wisdom or power but that he had to preach in the power of the Holy Spirit so that their faith would not be in mans wisdom but in the power of God, Sadly today too many Christians do not know or understand the power and authority that we have in Christ, not in our own wisdom or our own ability, but in Him, through what Jesus did for us at the cross. It is time for the Church to rise up and begin to walk in the authority and the power that Jesus has given us, to take the Gospel into the world with the demonstrations of power of the Holy Spirit through the preaching of the Gospel of Christ and Him crucified. AMEN.